As a B2B marketing and social media professional, the three questions I currently get asked the most are: “How do I get more followers on Facebook?”, ” Why do I need Twitter?”, and “How can I keep up with social media?”.

To the question “How do I get more followers on Facebook?”, my immediate answer is to take a step back and ask what the objective is. Having 5,000 FB fans and 3,000 Twitter followers is not a meaningful goal in itself. Once you have this number of followers, what are you going to do with them? This question should be answered at the get go.

Don’t fall into the trap that you have to be on social media at any price. Whenever resources have to be allocated, opportunity costs have to be considered.

Last year at a Blogwell conference, social media success was mainly measured as a number of click-throughs on URLs that were distributed via social media and as opportunity cost for impressions normally gathered via other channels. This year, listening and tracking tools for social media have made a huge leap and correlations are much easier established…but there’s still way to go (more in future blogs).

To answer the question “Why do I need Twitter?”, I say: “Maybe you don’t”. Twitter can be a very good tool to drive traffic to a blog and other places with ample content. It’s a good brand builder if you can be seen as a relevant news source by your followers (which means excellent curating). It’s good in high tech where many people are online 24/7. It’s maybe not so good if you target an audience that works in the public sector or in a bank where you might not have continuous (or sanctioned) access to the Internet.

If you decide Twitter is right for you, you have to invest time and patience to build the right Twitter following so that your Tweets will fall on “open ears”. If you don’t have the resources to build the following, monitor and feed the account, maybe it is not the right thing for you to do.

Third, “how do you keep up with social media”? Don’t let social media drive you crazy. It is a set of new tools that can be very useful for marketing in the right circumstances, and more and more Americans and people around the world are joining in every day. BUT, don’t get on the bandwagon just to be there because you think you need to (it might even harm you if you don’t take it seriously).

Breathe, start small by looking at your organizational and business objectives and spend some time researching, defining tactics, metrics and available resources. Set milestones, measure, keep making changes, measure again…

And ideally, have some fun with it. Nobody has fully figured out how to make the most out of social media for marketing, not even all those self-declared gurus!

>> Having 5,000 FB fans and 3,000 Twitter followers is not a meaningful goal in itself.

Excellent point to remember. Thanks for this post Natascha. Back when music came on physical “CDs,” i used to go and regularly buy used CDs. one day in my hunger for more, i asked the guy at the counter what music a *needed* to get — he said this: “When I feel like i *NEED* more, I usually go back to what I have and enjoy what is there already.” that stuck with me forever!

Another thing missing in many marketing how-to’s about social media is the personal aspect. For me, this is key: you are *yourself* on social networks – with your own habits and likes and dislikes and groups of friends and individual stories. To me, the twitter and facebook accounts aren’t first/foremost “SAP’s” account, but “moya, who just happens to work at SAP” — as a marketing person of course your mileage may vary, but being myself, for me, is key to online social interactions of all kinds.

I think this is a very timely blog entry, as I seem to spend all my time scanning (and often deleting) emails from providers offering to help me close more deals using social media !!!!! (the exclamation marks, apparently, are required email content :))

Even if a company decides to hold off on social media marketing efforts, some of the initial research you wisely recommend in your blog entry should include understanding the public’s perception of your company through social media. You as a company may not yet be part of the conversation, but if you have any sort of brand, you can be assured that a conversation about you is indeed happening.

Catherine, there’s great additional information in your comment. Thanks! I feel like you. I don’t need to get any more email listing the 3-5 things one has to do in social media to survive or avoid mistakes :). The key is to apply the same rules as for all other marketing, be clear about your goals, how to get there and measure/test.